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Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Radio Cochiguaz will do a test transmission the 31st of December 2014 on the last day of this year. The frequency will be around 6300 kHz, but check our website at http://www.radio-cochiguaz.com/ for more accurate information just before transmission begin at 02.00 UTC.(Slaen/playdx)

“ARRL Straight Key Night (SKN) returns on January 1, 2015 (0000 to 2359 UTC), offering a chance for many to get back to their Amateur Radio roots. Those operators who began their years in Amateur Radio restricted to CW on the old Novice bands used some sort of manual key to send. Straight Key Night is an opportunity to relive those “brass-pounding” experiences. This 24-hour event is not a contest but a day dedicated to celebrating our CW heritage. Read the full article at www.arrl.org(Larry Van Horn N5FPW)

Now our new transmitter finally
seems to work with an output of more than 10 kW,and we got a lot of good
reports for indoor reception with portable radios and telescopic antennas,
as well as reception with car radio, from all over Europe.

Please notice,
that you can rent airtime for only 15€ an hour for occasional broadcasts;for
broadcasts on a regular basis, please ask for conditions.Remember that some
hours, especially during the weekends, may be booked quickly!

Radio Mi
Amigo will be on air next Saturday; they will be glad for reports.

We
plan to be on air from Dec. 31st, later in the afternoon, for a longer period of
time,to make some final tests and checking the new security equipment that
shuts down thetransmitter in cases of emergency.Again we ask for your
reports how you can receive us, and how you evaluate quality of
ourmodulation - thank you in advance.
(Tom Taylor)

NEW PRICES:
Belgium: now priced at $2.20 up from $2.00
Bulgaria: now $3.00 up from $2.75
France, Andorra, Monaco: now priced at $2.00 up from $1.70
Netherlands: now priced at $2.00 up from $1.80
Qatar now priced at $2.50 up from $2.00

IN STOCK AGAIN: UAE

STAMPS ON BACK ORDER: Morocco.

BACK ORDERS will now be sent with your next stamp order, unless I have several to send you. Am losing money by sending out one at a time. Sorry.

We begin our Ancient DX Report for the
year 1909 with wireless reports about several shipping disasters in various
parts of the world.

The most notable shipping disaster in
association with the usage of the CQD distress signal took place early in the
year 1909, on January 24, when the Italian liner “Florida”struck the White
Star liner “Republic”out
in the Atlantic off the American east coast near the Nantucket Lightship. Jack Binns was the wireless operator at
station MKC aboard the stricken “Republic”and
over the course of time he transmitted some 200 emergency messages in Morse
Code.

Two other ships came to the scene of
this maritime accident; another White Star liner the “Baltic”,
and a Revenue Cutter the “Gresham”. A total of 1500 people were successfully
transferred, with the loss of only six people in the collision itself. The “Baltic”sank
at sea, and the “Florida”limped
into port at New York.

On June 10 the Cunard liner “Slavonia”,
callsign MVA, became stranded near the Azores Islands off the edge of Africa
when she struck the rocks off Flores Island.
Two German ships, the “Princess Irene”and
the “Batavia”heeded
the call and rescued all 597 people off the “Slavonia”before
she sank. Some of the wreckage of the “Slavonia”is
still visible to this day at the islet, Lower Rasa.

It is reported that the first double
usage of the distress signals, both CQD & SOS, was sent by the American
ship “Arapoe”in
August 1909 when it lost its propeller near Diamond Shoals off the American
Atlantic Coast.

Two other ships lost a propeller
during this year 1909, and aid was summoned by Morse Code telegraphy. These ships were the “City
of Racine”,
callsign JC, out from Chicago on Lake Michigan and the “Georgia”GC
also on Lake Michigan.

The coastal steamer “Ohio”struck
a submerged rock off the coast of Alaska on August 9, and Operator George
Eccles at the ship transmitter AO continued sending out a Morse call for help
even as the ship was sinking. Eccles
lost his life, though two nearby ships came to the rescue and picked up the
nearly 200 passengers and crew.

Down in the South Pacific, the
Norwegian freight and passenger steamer “Ocean Queen’was
on a voyage from Tahiti to the small phosphate mining island of Makatea. As the ship was entering the bay at Makatea,
the engines broke down and the ship was driven onto the coral reef. The passenger liner “Mariposa”HK
heard the emergency call and took off all personnel before the “Ocean
Queen”slid
off the reef and sank.

During the early part of the year
1909, explorer Robert Peary led an expedition to visit the North Pole. On the return journey back to the United
States, his ship called in to Indian Harbour in Labrador, Canada. He had a message sent to
the newspaper New York Times from the Marconi wireless station NR at Indian
Harbour, stating “I have found the Pole”. He claimed to have located the North Pole
earlier, on April 6.

In Denmark, Einer Dessau
communicated with a government wireless station six miles distant on March 18;
and in England the PMG Department took over all of the Marconi wireless
stations on September 29. In Australia
there were just two active licensees on the air; Mr. L. C. Jones in suburban
Adelaide and Mr. C. P. Bartholomew in suburban Sydney. In New Zealand, the government complained
that local amateur wireless operators were interfering with shipping
communications.

In the United States, the Junior
Wireless Club was formed in New York on January 2. Many more wireless clubs were formed
throughout the country during the year, though this New York club, which later
widened its activities as the Radio Club of America, claims to be the very
first in the world.

In 1909 the famous maritime wireless
station PH moved its operations from Russian Hill in South San Francisco to
Hillcrest, which became known as Radio Ridge.
During the transfer, station CH in the Chronicle Building filled in and
operated the maritime service.

In February, Dr. Lee de Forest
installed his new Arcphone radio transmitter in the Terminal Building and a
receiver in the Metropolitan Life Building, both in New York City. His mother-in-law, Harriet Stanton Blatch,
made a broadcast promoting Women’s Rights which was heard by an
audience of senior students from two nearby schools.

In April, the now famous Doc Herrold
began a regular broadcasting service over his spark wireless station in San
Jose, California. This station was
located at his College of Engineering and Wireless in the Garden City Bank
Building on 1st & West San Fernando Streets and the antenna system consisted
of more than two miles of bronze wire stretched out over four city
buildings. The 15 watt transmitter, with
a microphone and a battery, operated on long wave at 40 kHz.

On June 21, William Dubilier made a
public demonstration of radio broadcasting at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific
Exposition in Seattle WA in which he transmitted both music and speech. He was the first to use small sheets of mica
to provide a stable capacitance in the radio transmitter.

We should also mention that the
Great White Fleet, the American naval flotilla, made further radio broadcasts
in January and February, in the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic.

By the end of the year 1909, there
were close to a thousand wireless stations on the air in 70 countries throughout
the world, on land and on ship. Amateur
wireless operators were on the air in many different countries, including the
world’s
number one radio amateur Don Wallace in Los Angeles, who made his earliest
beginnings in 1909 with a Model T spark coil and his own self-assigned callsign
WU.

The
story of the Good Ship “Radio
Scotland”begins back in
the year 1904. That was the year in
which the John Brown Shipyards on the Clyde in Scotland built the 90 ft long,
500 ton, motorless barge LV “Comet”. The “Comet”was constructed
under contract to the Commissioner of Irish Lights in Eire for service as a
lightship in Dublin Bay.

At the end of some 60 years of
service at anchorage as a lightship near the city of Dublin, the “Comet”was
decommissioned and towed to St. Peter Port on the island of Guernsey in the
Channel Islands. Here it was, now under
the ownership of entrepreneur Tommy Shields, that the ship was fitted out as a
mobile radio station, with studio, transmitters and additional electronic
equipment.

The studio was prefabricated at the
RCA facility at Sunbury on Thames and two RCA Ampliphase transmitters, Model
BTA10 at 10 kW, were shipped from the United States. All of the radio equipment was assembled in a
warehouse on Guernsey and readied for installation into the ship. A mobile crane was used to lower the
preassembled equipment into the “Comet”

The studio was installed in what had
previously been the Captain’s Cabin when the ship was operating in Irish
waters; a 30 kW Deutz power generator was installed; and an aluminium mast 200
feet tall was attached to the stub of the previous wooden mast. One of the main problems associated with the
mobile crane and its task of transferring the heavy equipment from the dock
into the ship was that the tidal movement at this location at the island of
Guernsey varies as much as 30 feet each day.

The “Comet”, still as a motorless barge, was
towed from Guernsey up into Scottish waters via
the east coast of England. On the
way, the tow rope broke and it took two days to reattach the rope.

The new stationary location for the “Comet”was 3½miles off the
Scottish coast near Dunbar, approximately 25 miles from Edinburgh. The target date for the initial broadcast
from the “Comet”under the
identification slogan “Radio
Scotland”was scheduled
for the last day in December 1965. This
advertised time was barely achieved, only just 10 minutes before midnight,
though this inaugural broadcast was on the air at reduced power.

The
inaugural broadcast was heard at a good level in nearby Edinburgh and across
the open waters in Scandinavia, though the signal into Glasgow and the west of
Scotland was quite poor. The signal into
all of the mainland areas was improved significantly a couple of weeks later,
on January 16, when a special part from the United States was installed, thus
enabling full power operation.

The initial mediumwave channel was
1241 kHz, though this was modified to 1259 kHz after the specialized American
part was installed in 1966. Though there
were two mediumwave transmitters at 10 kW each aboard the “Comet”, and a locally
made combining unit had been installed, yet usually only one transmitter was on
the air at any one time.

On February 10, still in the same
year 1966, the radio ship “Comet”was flooded during a storm. A Coast Guard ship came to the rescue with a
bilge pump that removed this undesired intrusion.

As with so many of the pirate radio
ships around the British Isles and associated areas back then, Radio Scotland
aboard the LV “Comet”underwent its
share of troubles. Due to a poor signal
in the more heavily populated areas of Glasgow, arrangements were made for the
motorless ship to be towed to the western side of Scotland.

Again, this motorless ship was towed
for the 1,000 mile voyage around the northern coast of Scotland, from its
stationary location off the east coast of Scotland (Edinburgh side) to a new
location off the west coast of Scotland (Glasgow side). This voyage took a few weeks and initially
they were on the air as they travelled.
However, due to the difficulty in replenishing the slowly traveling
mini-convoy, radio transmissions were discontinued halfway through the journey.

When they arrived at their new anchorage
off the coast at Troon, Radio Scotland returned to the air, and a survey showed
that almost half of the total population of Scotland listened to the pirate
programming from the good ship “Comet”.
However, due to a misunderstanding as to the boundary between the legal
coastal waters of Scotland and the open seas, Radio Scotland was taken to court
and fined for illegal broadcasting from Scottish waters.

So again, the “Comet”was towed to a
new location, this time off the coast of Northern Ireland near Ballywater. On April 9, 1967, the station returned to the
air as Radio Scotland & Ireland, though briefly at one stage the
identification announcement stated Radio 242.

That didn’t work
financially, so again the ship was towed to another location this time the more
then 1,00 mile voyage back to its original location at Dunbar, off the east
coast of Scotland for improved coverage of Edinburgh and its surroundings. That
was in May of the same year,1967.

However, the end was on the horizon,
and advertising revenues did not cover expenses. Thus, the final epic broadcast of the very
popular Radio Scotland ended in the evening of Monday August 14, 1967. The ship was then towed to Dunbar on the
coast and offered for sale. When a sale
did not materialize, the ship was towed to Methill Harbour in the Fife and all
of the electronic equipment was removed.

The “Comet”’was then towed to Holland where it
was in use for a while as a house boat.
Then two year later, (1969) it was taken to Ouwerkerk and broken up.

In addition to its shipboard
facility, Radio Scotland also maintained an office in Scotland, on Cranworth
Street, just off Byres Road in West Glasgow.
At one stage, an advertising office was in use in Royalty House on Dean
Street in London.

At the end, listeners by the
thousand signed a petition to save Radio Scotland, with a request to grant a
legal license for a land based station.
The petition with 2½million signatures was presented to
the government licensing agency in London, but the request was denied.

A few short years later,
entrepreneur Tommy Shields was hospitalized with a kidney problem, from which
he never recovered. He died at the young
age of 49, with his lifelong dream unrealized.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Radio Free Asia (RFA) announces the released their 18th
Anniversary QSL card. RFA’s first broadcast was in Mandarin on September 29,
1996 at 2100 UTC. RFA is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting news and
information to listeners in Asian countries where full, accurate, and timely
news reports are unavailable. Acting as a substitute for indigenous free media,
RFA concentrates coverage on events occurring in and/or affecting Burma,
Cambodia, Laos, North Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and Vietnam. RFA does not express
editorial opinions but provides news, analysis, commentary, and cultural
programming in the languages of the country of broadcast. This is RFA’s 55th QSL design and
will be used to confirm all valid RFA reception reports to December
31, 2014.

Radio Free Asia 18th Anniversary QSL card

Created by Congress in 1994 and incorporated in 1996, RFA
broadcasts in Burmese, Cantonese, Khmer, Korean to North Korea, Lao, Mandarin
(including the Wu dialect), Vietnamese, Tibetan (Uke, Amdo, and Kham), and
Uyghur. RFA strives for accuracy, balance, and fairness in its editorial
content. As a ‘surrogate’ broadcaster, RFA provides news and commentary
specific to each of its target countries, acting as the free press these
countries lack. RFA broadcasts only in local languages and dialects, and most
of its broadcasts comprise news of specific local interest. More information about Radio Free Asia,
including our current broadcast frequency schedule, is available at
www.rfa.org.

RFA encourages listeners to
submit reception reports.Reception
reports are valuable to RFA as they help us evaluate the signal strength and
quality of our transmissions. RFA confirms all accurate reception reports by
mailing a QSL card to the listener.RFA
welcomes all reception report submissions at http://techweb.rfa.org (follow the
QSL REPORTS link) not only from DX’ers, but also from its general listening
audience.

Reception reports are also accepted by email at
qsl@rfa.org and by mail to:

In
the past three days 23 RFE/RL journalists were interviewed by Azerbaijan's state
prosecutor's office. A lawyer representing the Baku bureau staff said people
were being "dragged" to the prosecutor's office "by force and threats." Another
13 RFE/RL journalists are waiting to be summoned for questioning. Authorities
also began to question family members of journalists. The investigations follow
the raid
and closure of the RFE/RL Baku bureau on Friday, December 26. In early
December, authorities also arrested and jailed prominent Azerbaijani
investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova, a contributor to RFE/RL's Azerbaijani
Service programming.

"This
harsh treatment, including direct threats against our journalists, violates
every principle of media freedom," said BBG Chairman Jeff Shell. "We again call
on Azerbaijani authorities to permit RFE/RL's Baku bureau to reopen, to halt the
investigations and harassment of RFE/RL journalists and their families, and to
release Khadija Ismayilova."

In
a related development, on December 26 a Baku court heard
and rejected Ismayilova's appeal . She remains in prison after being
sentenced to two months of pre-trial detention on charges of inciting a
colleague to attempt suicide. Reporters Without Borders has called this "the
latest example of the appalling harassment to which this trailblazer of
investigative journalism has been subjected for years by [Azerbaijan's]
government in its drift towards despotism."

RFE/RL's
Azerbaijani Service is one of the last remaining independent media outlets in
Azerbaijan. Several international organizations that support civil society,
including IREX , the National Democratic Institute, and Oxfam have been forced
to suspend their operations in Azerbaijan this year.

Special thanks to Adventist World Radio Wavescan program for the script of their last series on Focus on Asia

Press Wireless Returns to Shortwave

As
the opening feature in our program today, we make a return visit to the
Philippines. This is the final feature
in our year long series under the title Focus on Asia.Next year, we are planning to present a year
long series of topics under the new title, Focus on the South Pacific.Even so from time to time, we will still
present interesting topics regarding the fascinating historic backgrounds of
other radio stations, large and small, in other parts of the world.

On this occasion, we pick up the Philippine
story towards the end of the Pacific War at the time when American forces made
a return visit to the Philippines. That
was towards the end of the climactic year 1944.

But first though, let’s go back to
the year 1929, and that was when the American news and radio organization,
Press Wireless Inc, PWI was formed. At
that time, a powerful group of news organizations in the United States
established PWI in an endeavor to improve the flow of news information into and
out of the United States.

At the time, radio was quite young,
and the concept of international broadcasting on shortwave was just
beginning. Thus it was that PWI began to
establish their own network of communication stations around the world; in some
countries they installed their own shortwave communication stations and in
others they utilized the facilities of already established stations. PWI also began to manufacture their own
transmitters and associated electronic equipment.

The first communication station
established by PWI was licensed under the callsign WJK and it was established
at Needham in suburban Boston in 1930.
This station at this era operated as a longwave station and it
communicated with a longwave station in Halifax Nova Scotia that was receiving
a news flow from a longwave Post Office station in England.

It is probable that the London end of this
news link wireless network was at Rugby, with either of the two longwave
transmitters, GBT or GBY. It is known
that the Halifax station was operated by the American Publisher’s Committee and
it was installed at the British cable station at St. Margaret’s Bay. An earlier temporary station had been located
at Dartmouth, across the bay from Halifax.

Station WJK, with its receiving and
transmitting facilities, circumvented the expensive landline costs from Nova Scotia
into the United States, and it also overcame the usual delay in transmission
over the landline system. In addition,
there were occasions when longwave WJK was able to communicate directly with
London, thus making the relay of news messages via Halifax unnecessary.

Then in 1932, PWI began construction
of their massive shortwave station located near Hicksville on Long Island
together with their nearby receiver station at Long Neck. At the height of its activity, PWI Hicksville
was operating a total of 28 shortwave transmitters ranging in power from ½kW up to 100
kW, together with a bevy of antenna systems beamed on Europe and Latin America.

It would appear that the lone
station WJK at Needham in Massachusetts was a temporary unit that closed when Hicksville
became fully operational. Hicksville
itself was closed in 1957 when another more modern station at Centereach was
inaugurated.

The first PWI wireless factory was
opened in the late 1930s at West Newton in Massachusetts. Then, in 1941 a new and additional factory
was opened at Hicksville in association with their shortwave communication
station. During the war years, their
famous 40 kW PWI shortwave transmitter was manufactured in quantity and these
units were installed at many different locations in many different countries
around the world.

Press Wireless entered the
Philippines in 1933; they opened an office in downtown Manila and they
installed a shortwave station on the edge of Manila. Two years later, PWI Manila was amalgamated
with two other international news agencies and the combined organization was
registered as Globe-Mackay Cable & Radio with offices and a studio building
in Manila.

The entire facility in the
Philippines was shut down in late December 1941 as Japanese forces began
closing in on Manila. American forces
deliberately destroyed all of these press radio facilities in Manila on
December 26, 29 and 30.

Three years later, Press Wireless
returned to the Philippines with a contingent of personnel and equipment at the
time of the MacArthur return invasion.
Two PWI sub-units, identified as PZ & PY, had been formed at
Hollandia on the north coast of the island of New Guinea and they were shipped
into the Philippines as part of the massive invasion fleet.

The PZ party installed a radio
communication facility at what was described at the time as a secret location,
though subsequently it is known that it was located at Tacloban on the island
of Leyte. The studio for PWI station PZ was installed in a warehouse just
opposite the MacArthur headquarters, and the transmitters were installed in a
nearby sandbagged bunker, together with MacArthur’s military transmitters.

The PWI shortwave transmitter PZ
with 400 watts was voice capable, though usually it was on the air with high
speed Morse Code transmissions via a Boehme speed sender. Callsigns in use at PWI Tacloban ran from PZ1
up to PZ9, according to frequency.

The inaugural news transmission from
PWI PZ took place on November 14, 1944 and it was received by the new PWI
shortwave station on the edge of Los Angeles in California. Station PZ also acted as an intermediate
relay for the transfer of news reports in Morse Code from the auxiliary ship
FP47 for reception in Los Angeles.

The PWI shortwave station at
Tacloban was not a mobile station installed in a group of army trucks, though
it could be removed and re-installed at another location quite speedily. On February 28 of the following year (1945)
PWI PZ in Tacloban was closed down, and the equipment was then transferred to Manila;
and that’s where we pick
up this story on the next occasion.